


so it ends/so it begins

by paperclipbitch



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: Daddy Issues, Friendship, Gen, Post-Canon, Pre-Slash If You Squint, So hard, harry and draco are trying so hard at parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-26
Updated: 2017-01-26
Packaged: 2018-09-20 03:26:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9473333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperclipbitch/pseuds/paperclipbitch
Summary: Scorpius sees the awkward tick of Albus’ mouth, because they’ve learned all kinds of things this past year, most of thembloody awful, some of them less so.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dwell_the_brave](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dwell_the_brave/gifts).



> [Title from _Father's Son_ by Tori Amos.] So, I asked my twitter feed for prompts, and **dwell_the_brave** asked for "Scorbus cute "holy shit we survived!!!" moment! Please!" And I thought "aha" and then... I didn't write that. What I did write was Scorpius and Albus and their daddy issues and their dads trying very hard, in the post-play period. I know, I know, literally nobody is surprised.

“Remember when we used to complain that our dads didn’t talk to us enough?” Albus groans, throwing himself into the common room sofa, all limbs and huffing.

“No,” Scorpius says, “I remember us mostly not talking about it and a lot of awkward foot shuffling and the vague implication that your dad was, you know, The Actual Worst. Stuff like that.”

He sees the awkward tick of Albus’ mouth, because they’ve learned all kinds of things this past year, most of them _bloody awful_ , some of them less so. Things are different now, anyway, and Albus ducks his head easily, scrubbing at his hair, an admission of guilt from a conversation they no longer need to have, and anyway, it’s not really a competition of Daddy Issues anymore. They’ve called a draw, tipped their respective kings. 

Because of this, Scorpius refrains from mentioning that the hair rubbing is exactly what Harry Potter does when he’s sheepish about something too. 

“Anyway,” Scorpius adds, taking pity, because there’ve been enough telling silences between them this year, “I take it your dad’s been oversharing. He didn’t try the sex talk again, did he?”

Albus gives a full body shudder. “No,” he replies, “which is just as well, I thought he was going to break his glasses from polishing them too hard.”

“Isn’t that meant to be indicative of something?” Scorpius asks, and Albus kicks at him, wincing and laughing. “Does that mean he listened when you told him you’d been too busy unravelling the fabric of reality to try out dating?”

“I know that worked on your dad,” Albus replies, “but I thought I maybe wouldn’t do that one on mine.”

When they compared awkward notes later, they concluded that Scorpius got the worse end of the Parental Sex Talk, partly because Albus’ dad at least got the worst bits over with James, and partly because oldschool purebloods who were in Slytherin in the early nineties apparently got up to all kinds of terrifying shenanigans that Scorpius doesn’t want to ever imagine in any context, let alone when his own father is alluding to them. 

“I thought I might try holding hands, first, you know,” he croaked finally, when his father had trailed off into a disturbing indicative silence, fingertips neatly steepled, expression surprisingly bland. 

Draco Malfoy tipped his head thoughtfully. “I suppose that’s an option too,” he’d allowed, and Scorpius had fled at that point to scream into some curtains and drink a lot of tea.

“…do you think,” Albus says after a long moment, “that maybe our dads worked out some kind of… plan?”

On the whole, Scorpius is glad that he can go and stay with Albus, and vice versa, without feeling like he’s trying to broker a truce in some kind of civil war, and it’s nice during the holidays not to watch his father tutting angrily over the _Prophet_ – though he does still make sharp comments about Harry Potter’s sartorial choices. Scorpius doesn’t mind that so much: it’s not exactly unjustified. Still, there is something a little unsettling Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy having something quietly approaching friendship. There are _actual academic books_ published about how the rocky dynamic between the two of them affected the results of the War, which, with hindsight, Scorpius thinks he probably shouldn’t have spent the summer he turned twelve secretly reading. 

“For us, do you mean?” Scorpius asks.

Albus shrugs a shoulder. “They do seem to take it in turns to come to the school and have oddly coordinating chats with us.”

The part where Albus and Scorpius nearly resurrected Voldemort, erased several classmates from existence, and generally ruined the entire world is an absolute sworn secret, which means that the entire school knows. It hasn’t made either of them much more popular, but weirdly enough people have stopped treating them both like they’re about to explode at any moment, presumably because no one is an evil secret time-travelling baby anymore. Now they’re just normal awkward losers, which is fine by Scorpius: it’s all he ever wanted to be in the first place anyway.

Scorpius studies Albus, the collapsed posture, the nervous flickering of fingers against his thigh, and wonders what conversational revelations Harry Potter has come out with to torment his son with. It’s not like it’s an intentional cruelty, and Scorpius’ discussions with his father are much the same: there’s trauma in the Malfoy family, recent and ancient, and talking about it is slightly better than ignoring it and letting it steep, but only slightly.

James and Lily don’t get the conversations that Albus gets, but that’s probably alright: they don’t need it, not the way Albus seems to.

Scorpius thinks sometimes about his mother, before she was ill, when she’d sit and play chess with Scorpius and his father paced his study and he had no idea why. “He’ll tell you one day,” she said, and he wondered if he’d ever be old enough. 

The tone of their conversations have changed, but then those suffocating not-talks they strangled their way through for years were worse, and Scorpius doesn’t miss them.

“Your turn next weekend,” Albus says, turning his head, grin suddenly bright. 

If they’d thought that their fathers’ enthusiasm for coming to the school and dragging them off for mildly traumatic parenting sessions was going to burn itself out in the first month of term, well, it turns out they were wrong.

“Great,” Scorpius says mildly, “maybe he can tell me something else alarming about the million terrifying things hidden in our basement.”

“Dad tried to tell me about trying to date Cho Chang who was suffering from trauma because her boyfriend had just been murdered by Voldemort,” Albus provides dolefully. 

Scorpius blinks a couple of times. “Gosh.”

Albus shrugs, slouches a little more. “I mean, he’s trying,” he says. There’s a wealth of complication in those words, but it’s fine: Scorpius gets it.

“And you survived,” Scorpius adds.

“I did.” Albus allows himself to slide sideways, a slow sort of collapse, all teenage boy gangliness and rumpled shirt. His head hits Scorpius’ shoulder; he lets it stay there.

There’s a handful of Sunday afternoon Slytherins in the common room, finishing homework and playing gobstones and first years laboriously writing home, but none of them turn to look: it’s not deliberate ignoring like it used to be, it’s more that there’s nothing important to stare at. Albus and Scorpius do this every week these days, after all.

Things are different now, and better, and harder, and that’s what growing up is, apparently.

Albus’ hair tickles Scorpius’ cheek. “Want some tea?” he offers.

“In a minute,” Albus replies, comfortably still.


End file.
